#BAHHSNOTBARS

BAHHS Not Bars seeks to establish bella BAHHS as an internationally respected millennial leader, raptivist and a scholar of Blk and popular US culture, social issues, gender and sexuality. It seeks to hold the rap industry accountable to the Blk community and disrupt its minstrel-esque proven formula for success by challenging stereotypical practices, images and lyrics. It will foster a healthy, safe and empowering relationship between the producers of popular culture and the global Blk community represented by their art and artifacts.

The campaign will help the Blk millennial generation forge a distinct and comprehensive identity-- that is not marked by our deaths-- by using hip hop as a method of communication to transmit, preserve and celebrate Blk heritage and cultural integrity

Bahhs Not Bars will politicize Blk youth by mobilizing public interest around issues that disproportionately affect and concern us (i.e. mass incarceration, inadequate & unattainable education, poverty, unemployment & underemployment, economic extermination, disease, sexual health & reproductive justice, reparations, etc). It seeks to provoke critical thought and dialogue about America’s patriarchal white supremacist capitalist cis-stem. It will raise awareness among Blk youth of the movement to abolish prisons and develop a new generation of community activists, organizers and leaders.

Lil Fannie

Written by bella BAHHS, Lil Fannie is a musical production of the pages from her diary, a sonic stationery more autobiographical audiobook than album—more Blk girl magic than Blk girl’s mixtape. The project offers a stunning lyrical account of the ways in which poverty, the War on Drugs, structural racism, misogyny, stereotypes and the myth of Black inferiority has affected Bella Bahhs’ upbringing and molded her activism.

SUITCASE

Aiming to harness the creative capital of Blk women and provoke critical thought and discussion of intersecting oppressions, Suitcase, directed by bella BAHHS, is a visual album and reimagining of the underground railroad as a modern survival network for Blk women.

FUCK FASHION

A collaborative artistic venture with fashion designer Michelle Janayea, Fuck Fashion reclaims style as a tool for political agency and self-definition. Both anti-capitalists, Bahhs and Janayea—the rapitivist and the artivist—create new looks from used clothes by deconstructing and reconstructing fashions.

STREETLIGHTS

Highlighting the visual and written arts of Blk women and femmes, Streetlights is a digital guidebook further exploring and explaining the themes of mule womanhood manifest in Lil Fannie. The guide features bella BAHHS’ song lyrics with a glossary of terms and decoded messages, the lookbook for Fuck Fashion, and the poetry, photography and artwork of other Blk femmes.